All in Good Taste
by nanirain
Summary: Alice and Jasper Oneshots.
1. Don't Insult My Taste

**A/N: **First one shot takes place in the middle of chapter 23. "Memories" in the fourth book Breaking Dawn. If you haven't gotten there yet, this will make small sense.

peace!

**Disclaimer**: Ok so this is fanfiction. Get it? "Fan" as in, of a fan, not an _owner_ and then "fiction" as in -- I don't own any of what Stephanie Meyer owns. Including Twilight's characters and storyline.

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"You're being unfair." She said, standing eight feet away, her petite frame planted firmly on a branch below mine. An irritated growl ripped through my throat, and I turned my head to the side, squatting down lower on my branch, my hands tight over my knees.

"I don't understand." I said tightly. "I can't - _understand_."

"Nobody understands Bella." Alice said. "Jasper, she's always been different."

I could feel her determination radiating against me, and her understanding. Her emotions were familiar and comforting, like stepping into my favorite room. Still, I couldn't help my own emotions.

"It's not _normal_." I growled.

"Neither are you." Alice said, suddenly landing on the branch next to mine and sitting down, now about two feet away. "Neither are any of us. In case you haven't noticed, not too many other vamps have decided to pick up the cardboard diet... and even fewer of us have these special little tricks you and I do."

I fisted my hands into the bark, taking some ounce of satisfaction at hearing it snap off beneath my hands. "Alice, she's so… _tame_. She's so…" another growl slipped out of my throat. "I can't _stand_ it!"

Alice shifted her weight on the tree branch. "Stop being jealous, Jas. It's a very unflattering quality on you."

I roared at her and she waited patiently for me to finish, without even a blink. After I had vocalized my rage, I let my head drop into my hands. I exhaled completely as I could, and then I refused to inhale again, forcing the feeling of physical discomfort. I felt the warmth of Alice's love start to smooth over me. It was so gratifying but at the same time...

"How can you even feel that way about me?" I said softly, tightening my grip on my head and still refusing to inhale.

"You know how." She said, sounding vaguely annoyed.

"… I don't belong here." I finally admitted what I'd been thinking for so long. "It's not easy for me to be around humans. I can't even walk into the school cafeteria without the putrid smell of their food to balance out the blood lust. I don't _belong_ with these people – with Carlisle… "

"You belong with _me_." Alice said with so much conviction and sudden emotion that I was almost overwhelmed by it. "And I belong with them. Therefore, by the distributive property of belonging-ness, you also belong with them."

I looked at her for a long time, and her pretty little face remained set like cool, beautiful marble. After a while of holding her gaze I turned mine back in front of me and leaned forward until the top of my head was pointing straight to the ground. And then I let myself fall. It would have killed any human, to fall from such a height. And it would have broken any human's arms, to catch their landing with a handstand like I did. I held myself upside down before I finally allowed myself to fall onto my back, flat on the forest floor. Above my head, Alice was still crouching on the tree branch.

Feeling the frustration well up again, I closed my eyes tightly. I could barely hear her land beside me, but her emotions came to the ground with her, warm and soft and so damned sure of everything.

"Jasper, don't you see how unfair it is to compare the two of you? You have had such a different past from Bella. For God's sake, you were in the Civil War before you were even a vampire. And then you had that whole newborn ordeal with Marie and the newborn wars – don't you see that it's unfair for you to expect to be able to escape your past and nature so quickly?"

I grit my teeth. "But she's socalm, Alice." I said. "She handled an _infant_ today."

"Yeah, her _own _infant." Alice said. "I hate to remind you, but you handled her too, remember?"

I cringed. The anger and frustration was gone now. In its wake was only a resigned sadness. "I don't know, Alice, I just-"

Whump!

I blinked in surprise as before I knew it, my wife had slung me up by the collar with one hand and pinned me up against the huge oak I had been crouching in only minutes before. I could feel the bark digging against my back and her smooth, small hands pressing hard against my collar bone.

"Jasper Whitlock Hale." Her bright gold eyes glittered. There was a sudden, hard and playful edge in her now one that I recognized, and instantly made me hungry. "In case you managed to miss this: I love you. And I have loved you for over the past half of a century. And I will love you for hundreds more. Because you're my favorite."

I smiled faintly as she came in closer until her devastatingly gorgeous face was only inches from mine. "Don't insult my taste." She said, smiling. "Because everybody knows that Alice Cullen has flawless taste."

I laughed quietly and allowed her to pull her face to mine. Before I could keep track of time, she had pushed my buttoned shirt open and had her small hands gliding all over me. It was enough to drive me slightly insane. And her mouth, intoxicating and smooth, was impossible to leave alone.

I would give Alice one thing - her taste _was_ flawless.


	2. You Kept Me Waiting

**A/N**: To tell you the truth, I really don't like this one. Jasper's character doesn't seem as flavorful. Constructive criticism on this would be great guys, I feel like I've lost his voice.

**Disclaimer**: fanfiction. no ownership. bah humbug.

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I walked into the human's diner because I was losing my grasp. Again. I had wandered, miles and miles from my last site, wondering when I would feel thirst. And here it was. I lived my life like this now, more ghost than vampire, ever since I'd left Marie.

I had wandered and there was guilt but not much else. But when I was hungry, I fed. Of course it was impossible to fight such a thing. And when my cravings overpowered what was left of my conscience, I always ended up feeding, indiscriminately.

I could tell, even from a distance, that the diner was slow-moving. There were five people at the most sitting in the booths and at the bar, eating their putrid, human food. Food that I didn't even know the taste of anymore.

I did not deliberate when I walked through the door. I didn't even know if I had been planning on killing anyone. But I had picked an environment where, if I felt the urge to, I could have done the job seamlessly. Five humans was barely an exorcise.

As soon as I walked through the door, a part of me woke up. I stopped, instantly altering my plans, or rather, formulating legitimate ones. There was one of my kind in here. No sooner had the thought materialized than did my eyes lock with a girl's.

Her hair was inky and short, her face porcelain and beautiful, and her frame petite. But there was no doubt that she was the most lethal force in the room. Immediately, my animalism kicked in. My stance slung back and my senses snapped into focus - within seconds I had memorized her scent. How could I have missed it before? It was so… distinct.

And there was, of course, the matter that she was staring at me. I fought the snarl from pulling back my lip. I thought about pulling out entirely. If this was her territory, then I was going to have no part in it, or in her food. But if she was going to be hostile, which was the only reason she would be staring at me so blatantly, then I was confident I could defend myself.

And then she grinned at me.

And for a long time, I felt nothing.

When I was mortal, I had once seen a man struck dead by a rod of lightening. It had been sudden, unexpected, and I had remembered feeling briefly startled to see the jagged, violet line connect with the man's skull. It had killed him instantly. Back then, it had seemed so powerful, as if it could have been God's own hand reaching down to strike this man. It had filled me with fear. But when I looked at his face, he had seemed to register nothing. There was no pain there and no trace of fear, so unlike the contorted expressions of those I had seen fall in battle. Their deaths had been caused by mortals, and so they were prolonged and painful and slow, but this man had been contacted by something so powerful, that he had almost been struck empty by it.

For a moment, this is what I felt her smile had done to me.

For a moment, I might have been that man, lying in the field, struck dead and completely void of everything that grounded me into who I was, by this girl's smile.

I watched as she slid off her stool, her grace a bit too liquid to pass as mortal – she was not very good at disguising herself. And from the looks of the way she was moving, it seemed that she had not long been a vampire. That alone should have put me on edge. There was too much of my past walking towards me. Realizing how new a vampire she was, I almost turned around and backed out right then. But I was stopped by an emotion that I did not recognize slowly creeping upon me, coming, I realized, directly from this girl. It was confidence; complete and utter confidence.

I tensed. Confidence was a bad thing. It had been a long time since another vampire had approached me without at least some small sense of anxiety, even if their face hid it perfectly. Lack of anxiety is not normal when you look at someone like me. Mortals cannot see them, but the scars all over my body send a warning to most of my kind. They practically scream, _danger_. Anybody who has lived through enough fights to get scars like mine, tend to be avoided by those who can see them, even newborns.

No one feels safe around a walking memorial to pain.

And yet that smile… somehow it seemed so strange. I could not bring myself to feel tense. For a moment, I wondered if I were broken.

"You," the girl said when she was only inches away, her voice clear and beautiful like the first bells of winter morning, "have kept me waiting a long time." She extended her hand.

On instinct, I took it. It was the most human thing I had done in centuries. And I didn't even stop to question it. "I'm sorry, ma'am." I said, my southern drawl taking even me by surprise – I hadn't been expecting to hear myself speak. I hadn't spoken to anyone in such a long time.

And then, if it was even possible, the girl seemed to brighten. And I felt something I hadn't felt in centuries well up inside me. Don't ask me to explain it, because I still can't.

"I won't hug you," the girl said, "because I can see that probably wouldn't go over very well." She was still grinning. "But in case you're wondering, I really, really want to."

I stared at her dumbly, vaguely aware that the humans in the booth beside us were staring. I could feel their incredulity radiating towards us. In both of them, a burning curiosity seemed to ask, "Who _are _you people?" They could hear our conversation.

The girl's eyes, which were startlingly gold, like the foil I had seen in the windows of human shops, darted towards them. "Let's go outside," she whispered to me, and I felt something inside me shift as she leaned closer. "If we stay, those two are going to start asking awkward questions. And we don't have time," she said, still grinning at me as if I were keeping a secret of hers. "I want to get to know you, Jasper Whitlock Hale."

I looked at her, simultaneously wondering how she had gotten my name both right and wrong. Briefly, I wondered if she was toying with me or if she was possibly insane, but another scan of her emotions erased that suspicion completely. Aside from her easy confidence, there was something else coming from her I couldn't quite place. Something I couldn't recognize. It would be a long time before I would be able to identify it, because Alice is perhaps the only person who has ever felt this way towards me. She is the only one I have ever known, to give me her absolute trust.

"C'mon," she said, and opened the door to the diner, the bell tinkling, reminding me of her whisper. "Let's go."

What else could I have done, but follow her out the door?


	3. Coming to Terms

A/N: I've found that this is the place I update when I just have random ideas float into my head. Which is what this is. I didn't spend that long putting it together and it probably could be a lot better but at any rate, here it is.

Disclaimer: I don't own Twilight.

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They had taken the Mercedes, because Carlisle told them too, with the windows tinted so dark that they were almost black and no chance passer-by would catch the hard, glittering of their bodies. Which was, in some ways, a waste, he thought, because she was most beautiful in the sun.

He watched the delicate pale blue horizon before them, the never-ending stretch of tarmac, and drove.

She sat beside him, small, like a girl. Once again he was struck by the irony that _he_, the veteran, the warrior, the solider, the animal, the murder, should be dependent on _her_. Alice was the flowers, and the sun, and a smile.

_But she will not smile today_, he thought.

Beside him, she was like a tightly sealed package. Like a girl who had erected a cardboard box around herself, deliberately shutting everything away. The box, he knew, was not for him. It was for her. She didn't want to see. She didn't want to know what she would find until she found it. Because it would be better that way. Because it might not be easier, but it sure as hell would be worse if she looked.

He felt his feelings for her, that were always inside, settle like a stone at the bottom of a river. He would love her forever.

Little flowers were poking up from the ditches that lined the road, reminding him of her and the day when they had first met Bella, at the house. How things were changing. Bella's birthday was coming up soon and they would be throwing a party, the Cullens and the Hales. He knew that he and Rosalie were the only ones against the idea, but he would do it because it would make _her_ happy. Because she loved parties. And, apparently, she was going to love Bella. He made a conscious effort to push back his agitation. He trusted her. Still, every second that Bella was alive was a danger to her.

Jasper kept himself very still, even for a vampire. But he had always been that way. He was always still outside of battle and a hurricane of blood when he was in it. Particularly when he was defending her.

Not, she had reminded him over and over, that she needed defense. But maybe, he thought, extending his power over towards her, she would need it tonight. He didn't probe her inside and out. She needed privacy now.

There is about one small accumulation of snow in Mississippi every two years. It's a freak incident. And the white precipitation never sticks, because Mississippi never gets cold enough.

But it was snowing tonight. Small, white dots fell and melted upon touching the ground. But they stuck in Alice's hair.

She made her way up the hill ahead of him in her dark clothes, a small, plain dress made of black cotton. She was barefoot in the overgrown grass, which was slick and wet beneath their marble-like skin.

She stopped short, as did he. She because she had seen something, and he because the sudden wave of despair and anger and hurt and something a little like joy was nearly enough to make him gasp for breath. "Alice," he whispered, instinctively starting to help her.

"No," she said, hardening as she stared at the slab of slightly crumbled stone before her. Her voice was firm and broken. It was a command. It was a plea. "I want to _feel _this," she said. Her little white shoulders were held perfectly at her side, but the tendons in her neck were straining. Her posture, as always, was exquisite, but she was so still that he wondered, for a moment if this was what it was like for a human to see him, unmoving, untouchable, and sad.

Knowing what she wanted without even asking, he stepped away. But even he couldn't keep his eyes from gazing over as he stared furiously at the engraving.

IN LOVING MEMORY

MARY ALICE BRANDON

1901-1918

He clenched his fists into mallets of marble and forced himself away, back down the wet grass, which stuck to his shoes. He was always analytical. He was always calm in crises. But the crescendo of Alice's emotions, which he could feel, even know at his back, made him uneasy and tense. His own emotions darted to and fro about him like nervous fish: protectiveness, hate, anger, love, hesitation...

He heard the sound of stone cracking behind him and knew that he could not accompany her through this. All he could do was play the dark knight in the gothic fairy tale, bringing the princess to her grave and hoping that she would still have him afterward.

He waited at the bottom of the hill, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of a leather jacket. It was a human habit that he had ingrained in himself; he didn't generate body heat, pockets provided no excess warmth. He leaned against the little wall of stones, which sloped brokenly around the perimeter of the cemetery, and waited for her, keeping his senses alert, listening to every single trace of sound, in case she needed him.

Hours later, he heard her coming down the hill, but waited for her to reach his side before he looked at her.

There was a glaze of ice over her white skin, where the snow had frozen. She had stood there, alone, for hours. And he if he hadn't known it was necessary he would have hated it.

"Nineteen eighteen," she said, looking forward. "I suppose, that's the year they put me away."

"What is in your hand?"

She opened her palm, and inside laid a long jagged shard of gray stone. "I've punched my grave," she said matter-of-factly, as he stared. "Do you think I'll be sent to hell for it?"

He looked up at her and she was already gazing into his eyes, something insincere was tugging at the corners of her lips and he put his hand over it. '_Don't try to smile if you can't.'_

Beautiful face, inky halo of hair, and in her he felt the empty bitterness that would have come from hours of wanting to cry but being unable to. That came with loss. They spent hours staring at each other, slowly, he felt her start to burn.

He helped her feel the loneliness and betrayal, because he knew a part of her wanted that. He made her feel that need, their bond. _I will never leave you_.

She sighed. And he took her suddenly by the waist, lifted her up onto the stone wall and pulled her violently into him.

"I knew you were going to do that," she remarked, quiet and sad as she extricated her head from his chest and lifted her chin up onto his shoulder.

Then she sighed again and wrapped her arms around him, tight, the shard of her grave pressing against his neck.

He decided, that he was taking her home. And she must have seen it, because before he could even say anything she was sliding off the wall and walking towards the car. And there was a part of her now, a new part that was Mary Brandon and it belonged to her only.

She turned around, her pale grace and the glimmering silver lines of her body in the moonlight, the ice and snow on her collarbone, and the green blades of summer grass stuck on her bare ankles making her look like an angel. The shard of her grave was still held fast in her hand.

_Are you coming_? Her eyes asked.

OoOoOoOoO

They stopped at a hotel on the way back to Forks. And as he laid her in the bed, her small petite frame still wrapped in that thin black dress, he knew what she wanted. She put the shard on the table by the door. And then they made love.

And when she felt hurt, he let her feel it. And when she felt lust he fed it with his own. And when she felt scared and incomplete and damaged he pushed promises, and packed comfort into all the empty spaces until she was too full with emotion to know anything more. To know that she had ever been Mary.

He helped her heal.

Exhausted, they fell onto the sheets, which smelled like cigarette smoke and human. He watched the lines of her body move as she gasped down breaths. And turning, she fit her figure into his, her fingers threading into his dark blond curls. His Alice.

She was grateful, he could feel it. And when she pressed her hand into his cheek, he kissed her until they were uncomfortable from having not breathed for so long. She took a long breath and opened her eyes. They watched each other until daybreak. And when the light poured in through the window and set his skin ablaze like so many little diamonds, he saw the twitch at the corner of her delicate mouth and touched it with his fingertip. And then his Alice smiled.


End file.
